The Conference Coach™

Carolyn Bradfield

I always watch the State of the Union address even though I am a Republican and am a little disappointed in the 2009 results.  Aside from Mr. Obama’s considerable oratory skills, I enjoyed the subtle drama of watching who stands up and sits down, who sits on the aisle as he walks in, the symbolism of purple as the new Washington color and watching the Supreme Court and Joint Chiefs react to statements they disagree with.

In the spirit of national tradition and as the President of Copper Conferencing, here is my State of the Union address.  Despite the faltering economy, 2009 was a good year for Copper.  We invested in our infrastructure and technology creating ways for customers to engage with us on-line and gain control of their account management.  We grew our company by 10%, despite having less people to be on a conference call based on the growing layoffs and unemployment.

We created jobs.  In 2009, a number of college graduates got their first business job with Copper Conferencing.  We trained, mentored and coached them so they could be outstanding business people at Copper and beyond.  We helped our employees buy their first homes by providing interest free loans to help them with the down payment needed for the first time home buyer’s tax credit.  2009 was a good year for us, but it’s nothing compared to our plans for 2010.

I had planned to invest in the business anyway, but Mr. President, if you give me the tax incentives you spoke about, I’ll return the favor by investing more in the business.  I’ll add more jobs, employ contractors, pay for services and increase the tax base.   With or without your tax incentives, here is what to expect in 2010 at Copper Conferencing.

We’re expanding our web conferencing capabilities by partnering with the largest and most utilized web conferencing services in the country – Adobe® Acrobat® Connect, Microsoft® Live Meeting and Cisco WebEx®.   You can try before you buy and have them integrated with Copper’s On Demand audio conferencing.  Copper will add levels of support, service and training to help customers know what to use and how to get the right business results.

We will continue to launch enhancements to Connect To Copper’s customer portal.  The portal will be the key place to get account information, but also information about your conference call.  It emails post-conference summaries and contains usage reports.  We’re adding the capability to download or listen to conference recordings.  You can go to the Portal, add billing codes to a call and make sure the cost is allocated to the right cost center or customer number.

We’re going to transform how you can connect to an On Demand conference call.  Pick any major city in the United States and we will have a local dial in number for participants in that city.  Voice Over IP technology will deliver that call to the conferencing bridge and significantly reduce the cost of conferencing.  Local numbers will never change and can be delivered via the web, iPhone or Blackberry.

We’re upgrading our audio conferencing capabilities so you can have even more control over your conference call.  You can add subconferences, control line or call volume, add call security and even record a personal greeting for your conference call.  You can bring pre-registered participants in to an operator assisted call with a personalized PIN so their name and information is already captured before the call starts.  We’ll have more ways to connect your international participants and reduce the cost of coming into a call from overseas dramatically.

Mr. President, fellow citizens and customers, Copper Conferencing will invest more, create more jobs, save our customers money, increase their productivity and at the same time help with Global Warming. (We might even tackle healthcare if we have time!) The State of the Union is looking bright for Copper Conferencing in 2010!

To learn more about what’s new at Copper and how audio conferencing and web conferencing services can help you improve your business and cut costs, contact a Conference Coach today.